Networks and network connectivity are playing an ever-increasing role in the global economy. Networks, such as the Internet, and the efficiency and/or reliability of the associated connections, are crucial to the advancement of modern science, technology and industry. A significant and growing component of technological, scientific and industrial advancement occurs in developing and newly industrialized countries where such networks are sporadic, underprovisioned, unreliable or otherwise suboptimal. In many of such countries, other utilities, such as electrical utilities, are similarly suboptimal. The combined infrastructural inefficiency in such areas conspires to make consistent and reliable network connectivity challenging, which directly and indirectly affects the rate of technological, scientific and industrial innovation and productivity reliant thereon.